It is known that absorbent articles, in the forms of diapers, pant diapers, or incontinent-protecting products, are generally used for babies and incontinent adults for the absorption of bodily exudates, such as blood, urine, sweat and faeces. Some of these absorbent articles are provided with a belt to be placed around the waist of the wearer to facilitate putting on and putting off of the articles.
There are two kinds of belts. One type of belt is integral with the pad and will be discarded together with the disposal article, see for example EP 1142547 A1. The belt may be an intact belt permanently attached to the pad. The belt may alternatively be in the form of two halves laterally extending from either side of the waist portions of the pad.
The other type of belt relates to a separate belt detachably attached to the pad, see for example WO99/21522, WO94/26224, WO94/26222, WO94/26225 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,964,960. The ends of the belt are provided with attaching elements, which are attached to each other when the belt is placed around the waist of the wearer. To put on the article on the wearer, one of the ends of the pad is detachably attached to the belt (this step will be omitted if the belt is integral with the pad). Then the pad is passed through between the legs of the wearer. Finally, the other free end of the pad is detachably attached to the belt. The attachment between the two ends of the belt as well as the attachment between the belt and the pad are generally obtained by hook & loop connections, which are known to the persons skilled in the art. Optionally, other fastening means such as adhesive bonding may also be used. The provision of a reusable separate belt is favorable in order to save material.
However, in the above mentioned articles, the waist portion of the pad is flat without any elastic. When attaching the pad to the belt, the pad is prone to be positioned correctly in transverse direction with offset, such as in U.S. Pat. No. 4,964,860, since the attachment areas are small.
In view of this, some belts are provided with attaching indicators to show where the pad should be attached. Some pads are provided with extendable waist portions in order to adjust the attaching positions between the pad and the belt.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,971,970 a garment system with an absorbent pad and a separate belt is disclosed. The longitudinal ends of the pad are provided with hook element strips to be attached to loop elements on the belt or to the belt itself. In addition, in view of the comfort, the belt is provided with a non-attachment zone, the length of which is defined to not be larger than the distance between the two hook elements on the waist portion of the pad in order to obtain comfort and precise positioning. Especially, FIG. 7 of U.S. Pat. No. 5,971,970 exhibits an absorbent garment comprising hook attachment areas and waist elastics 15 between the hook attachment areas in each end of the article.
As to the purpose of providing the waist elastics, U.S. Pat. No. 5,971,970 just mentions that “fitment of the chassis correctly then requires merely extending the strip 6′ away from each other until they have a separating y greater than the length x of the zone 7”.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,971,970 does not mention the strength of the hook & loop connection between the pad and the belt. Rather, U.S. Pat. No. 5,971,970 only mentions that the belt contains a nonwoven material to strengthen the attachment, but the relations between the shear force from the waist elastic and the peel force required to separate the hook element and the loop element are not discussed. When the peel force is too low, the pad may undesirably detach from the belt, which results in leakage and contamination. Too high peel force, on the other hand, will make it difficult to detach the pad from the belt when needed and may thus result in undesired damage of the belt in the case where it is a reusable belt.